Spice Chest - Done At Last

This spice chest was built to replace the first one I built. That one got cooked when my parents’ thermostat malfunctioned and heated the house to Death Valley temps.

I will probably never build another one. If they cook this spice chest then I will either go to Walmart and buy them something in a fine tupperware pattern or I’ll knock something together out of 2×4s and a can of walnut stain. The carcase, the base, and even the drawers were fun but the door fought me every inch of the way – frame, panel, lock, escutcheon, and hinges. You’re looking at door #4. There is probably 12 board feet of wasted walnut out in the shop from doors 1, 2, 2.1, 2,2, 3, 3.1 and so on. The color difference in the panel isn’t as pronounced as it looks in the pic but it is still noticeable. (The actual color of the wall is a nice 1970’s banana yellow in semi-gloss.)

The rear panel drops down a couple of inches to reveal the drawer hidden just under the top. The middle drawer has a false bottom that pulls out from the back to reveal another hidden drawer. Both ideas I shamelessly stole from an old FWW article.

Finish is BLO/Spirits/Varnish. The drawer bottoms and the front for the middle drawer are of cherry. I know it’s unusual but the first chest was cherry and I wanted to reclaim what I could from its shriveled up remains to use in this chest. Right now the color of that drawer is more of a peach than a cherry but I expect it to darken a bit over time and improve with age.

”Was the first one a “house warming” gift?”That’s a good one. I can laugh at it now but when it first came back to me in a pile of shriveled little chunks of wood (moisture content close to zero percent) it was pretty depressing.